[freezer]

Originally Posted by Five

As for bootleg silvers, we originally didn't want them here at all since they're unknown generation. We decided to allow them because (a) we want to take profits away from bootleggers

(a) Sites like this and dime and eztree and Yahoo groups etc really haven't taken as much away from bootleggers as made their job a lot easier in obtaining shows to sell.

Certainly haven't cut into the Dylan or Rolling Stones or Led Zeppelin bootleggers profits at all. Most new Dylan boots come from torrents directly from these sites...

(Local New Orleans bootleg record store, The Mushroom, was selling copies of YES "Master Series#2", 12/1/74 - Baton Rouge --- which is supposed to be a product of a fan group, but the fan group actually made it easy for the bootleggers to obtain materials that were already salable. Even the fan artwork was reproduced.)

These are not just isolated incidents. Led Zeppelin 2/28/75 Baton Rouge was torrented on R-O and dime a few months ago. Now the same show has just been released from Empress Valley. A boot of a torrent of a boot. And how soon after someone at TTD obtains the Empress Valley boot will it be seeded on this site?

A torrent of a boot of a torrent of a boot?

Is that acceptable lineage?

Sure, as long as the seed is ripped from AN "original silver" boot, right?

Originally Posted by Five

(b) those bootleggers have made some unsurpassed stuff (or at least sometimes unsurfaced). We decided that we wouldn't tolerate CDR gens for boots since there are a fair number or any title out there ripe for the EAC'ing.

(b) that may have been true years ago, like in 1970 or so - when bootleggers actually did record shows, but many bootleggers now "surface" shows that other bootleggers have already surfaced. OR that have actually surfaced from tapers or collectors.

Plus, how do you know that some taper/trader didn't surface that show you attribute to a bootlegger? Just because you haven't seen it yet, doesn't mean it wasn't being spread by some traders already.

Here I speak from experience. The Johnny Winter 6/7/75 that I taped 30 years ago was given freely to the rsboots yahoo group in 2002. They spread it around, but it was bootlegged in 2002 (from one of their clones of the CDr).

So I went back to the master tape and did a new digital transfer, this time including a minute of audience noise and stage announcements that weren't on the first transfer. That was first spread on a couple of Yahoo groups like Archival Group and AllBlues.

So if you didn't belong to these groups that "surfaced" those versions of that recording, you would have testified that the bootlegger "surfaced" that 6/7/75 Johnny Winter recording, right?

And if I hadn't supplied a CDr "master clone" of transfer 2 with appropriate lineage, the bootleg would have been allowed here, but the better second digital transfer with more material would not?

Originally Posted by New Homebrew

As for "FM", "master destroyed", "dubbed from safety copy" none of those are really considered master sources. The master tape is the one recorded at the time and place of the event. If it gets destroyed or burned up, the 1st gen copy doesn't become the master, even though it's the lowest gen available. Some people do make digital transfers or analog copies directly from the actual masters and sometimes it's from a safety copy, as above. You just need to hammer out the details if it really matters to you.

In the 3 years since I've returned to the hobby, I have indeed seen "That Which Passes for the MASTER" listed in lineage where a master tape was unavailable for common trading. This is in the "low gen" Led Zeppelin community, and in particular in an on-line list in reference to the 2/28/75 LZ in Baton Rouge recording. The Pink Floyd "low gen" community is also experiencing a similar problem, with the 4/28/77 Baton Rouge show with some self-professed expert now passing off a copy of the bootleg as a "first generation" copy.

Does it matter? There are some collectors who do say they have a master copy if it comes from a "silver" boot. There are some collectors who do document their collections very meticulously and don't want copies of boots as "master copies".


Its one of the reasons I prefer to pass out shows here at TTD. At least the majority of collectors who are here are very interested in getting it right the first time.

However, I still question the policy of seeding bootlegs as freely as is the custom here. That policy, as now stands, makes it too easy for confusion to cloud the lineage issue.


Your mileage may vary.